Brexit and hate

I read a super thread on twitter today starting with "what's the worst thing about brexit? ...and it's nothing to do with Europe". The answer was all about impunity for political cockups (e.g. 100s of letters going out to uk legal residents telling them to leave the country, no call for the home sec, HO minister or even immigration minister to resign) and conspiracies,

To me that is 2016/7 politics all over, the same shit in the US despite they have no brexit.

I expected the answer to be the legitimisation of victimisation of europeans and non-ukers. The expansion of bad behaviour by the state is an example here too, e.g. in Samim's deportation case. But also on the streets. And the expansion of bad faith all round.

I'll post the thread if i can find it again.

It's odd how abstract the actual europe issues are compared to the non europe issues, perhaps the worst is yet to come in both

i question whether people were more tolerant and accepting in the past...maybe they were just more complacent. and did the rise of social media jolt them, providing a powerful soapbox to amplify the hate and expand its influence?

i question whether people were more tolerant and accepting in the past...maybe they were just more complacent. and did the rise of social media jolt them, providing a powerful soapbox to amplify the hate and expand its influence?

It would be worth starting a seperate thread on whether people are more tolerant now or if it's just "Cheap tolerance" in many occasions [I got my personal theory on that which is in a nutshell: today gay bashing or jokes on disabled isn't tolerated any more, at least in in semi-public or the workplace (or to be precise, my workplace), while other excluded groups like the jobless/on welfare are being pressured more today than I ever remember. So I think the name of the scapegoats have changed, but not the need FOR a scapegoat].

And regarding social media - I think all that hate-mongering and conspirational thinking was there already, but not that visible bc not everyone and their dog had a smartphone and the urge to blast their views on things (potentially) out into the world. It's just some half-drunk babble which used to happen in a pub at 11pm is now being broadcasted onto social media.

This whole saga of people who've lived here nearly their whole lives being told they have to produce unfeasible amounts of paperwork or face being kicked out is as bizarre as it is ugly and tragic. I mean it doesn't even make a reactionary kind of sense. It's just so irrational and mean that it's hard to imagine that many people actually supporting it, so it's hardly a 'vote-winner', and there's no particular reason the government would want to call a general election any time before 2022 in any case. It achieves nothing except making them look like spiteful racists.

Now if I were a conspiratorially-minded person, I might wonder if this isn't the whole point: to test the water and see just how far they can push things while Labour is in this state of utter disarray.